Supernatural Underground

My oh my, it’s July 1, so one thing that means is that I’ll be posting on the Supernatural Underground later today. On July 1, too, but US EST, which takes a little longer to roll on over on the calendar – yep, first in the world to see the new day, that’s us! 😀

If you’re following the Magic Systems In Fantasy series on the SU, just a hint that there’s a change in focus for the rest of the year – but all will be revealed “over there”, laterz. Watch that space!

Influences On Story

Otherwise, I’ve been gambaruing on with writing The Chaos Gate (The Wall Of Night #4) amid alternating floods, and high winds and seas. It all makes for an exciting – and occasionally scary – view out the writing window, I have to say, and engenders considerable reflection on the dynamism and power of nature when on the authorial coffee break.

After the storm

Will it creep into the work in progress? Well that, dear readers, is impossible to say at this juncture, chiefly because influences on story tend to heart Emily Dickinson and prefer to be told “slant.”

Did I say authorial coffee break?

However, given the current tempestuous environment, I thought I’d share an apposite quote from the WALL series to date. I enjoyed hunting it out, so I hope you enjoy reading it. 😉

USA

That WALL Series Quote

The whispering slipped away and Kalan turned back toward sleep—but the dream transformed into a heaving mass of water. Overhead, lightning tore the heavens apart, while thunder, wind, and ocean battered at each other. Have I crossed into one of Yelusin’s memories? he wondered, recalling the Sea mariners’ accounts of deep ocean storms. The vision rolled, hurling him onto the back of a mountainous wave. For a moment he rode above the abyss, lightning spearing around him, before the crest collapsed. An avalanche of water crashed into his side and he veered wildly off true. Voices screamed as a snapped mast thudded down and he was running blind, every fiber stretched to breaking point as he strained to climb the next towering wave.

Lightning exploded again and the black clouds boiled as a behemoth plunged through them, trailing streamers of fire. Kalan felt as though he might splinter apart at any moment but clung to the dream, striving to understand what the Gate—or the fragment of Yelusin contained within his mind—was showing him. “Too soon.” The whisper burned in his mind like one of the streamers of fire. “Too soon… But I burn. I cannot hold—”

“We’re tearing apart!” The man’s shout was raw with urgency, although Kalan could see nothing but black rushing water and the lurid glow overhead. “She’ll never hold unless—”

Unless what? Kalan wondered, as the clouds overhead snapped closed and the behemoth disappeared. The tempest continued to batter at him, but the wind’s fury was dying. The next time cloud and water swirled, the funnel around him was gray, not black. Finally, the storm dissipated altogether, transforming into clear dawn above a long gray firth.

~ from © Daughter of Blood, The Wall Of Night Book Three – Chapter 27, The Turnings Of Fate

UK/AU/NZ

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And dinna forget to check in on the Supernatural Underground later today. In the spirit of Teresa Frohock’s Los Nefilim series, I’ll watch for you there. [Waves.] 😀